“Baseball opinions are like assholes… everybody’s got one and most of them stink.” — Harry Caray

Post World Series Reaction Part 1: Identity Crisis

The Cubs have put all the curses and goat lore behind them with their World Series win last week, but to say unique discoveries didn’t occur along the way would be an understatement. One glaring discovery that Smitty and I discussed was some Chicagoans went through an identity crisis.

The first notable change I witnessed was suddenly in the Southwest burbs Cubby blue was more prevalent than ever before, even on White Sox fans. That took me back and drove me to the realization that there never was a bandwagon more full than the 2016 Cubs World Series Run.

This was an area that when my son, Charlie, wore his Cubs shirt would get some friendly ribbing such as, “you’re in the wrong part of town” or “right city wrong shirt”. In the blink of an eye that all went away for fear of not being part of something historic, or at least that’s my best guess. If you come back with the “I’m a Chicago fan statement”, ok, but you’re not vested in it like true Cubs’ fans so shut the fuck up.

The number two incident that really confused me was a friend of mine that was a long suffering Cubs fan, denounced them for a decade plus was now back on the bandwagon going to a World Series game. I found this disingenuous especially since so much of his views focus around the political nature of the Cubs ownership and how in his giving money to the Rickett’s family is like punching Trump on November 8th. Again, I can only surmise from this behavior, fear of missing out on something historic.

The final moment came this past Friday when an estimated five million “fans” took over Grant Park and the city of Chicago. If you needed to get downtown to work that day it may not have happened as Cubs’ fans overtook the Metra lines causing normal commuter trains to run express leaving daily commuters no way to get into work.

Five million is a lot of people; in fact, it seems unbelievable since at the last census the population of Chicago was 2.72 million and the Chicagoland area total population is 9.73 million. Over 50% of the Chicagoland area converged onto the city to celebrate the Cubs win and a little less than double the Chicago population. That’s insanity!!! That’s also yet again a lot of people that did not want to be left out of something that was historic for Chicago baseball. It would be more historic if it had not happened for Chicago 11 years earlier, but since everyone forgot about the Sox win in 2005, it was the biggest event since in Chicago since the Miracle Mile Holiday Parade; over a million people attend the parade every year.

I don’t begrudge people for having fun or celebrating, but in the process don’t comprise your integrity and piss all over the fans that really deserve to be standing there.